- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
Starting with Firefox 148, which rolls out on Feb. 24, you’ll find a new AI controls section within the desktop browser settings. It provides a single place to block current and future generative AI features in Firefox.
They actually listened to the community, thats very nice.
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And as always… There is no actual “AI” being used here.
It’s especially hilarious how translation programs, which have existed for decades, are suddenly considered “AI”. Likewise with all of “AI”.
It’s also pretty funny how mad people get about translations, image classification, grouping… These are just like basic 101 programs with zero “AI” involved. Not much to get mad about.
Agreed that it’s not really AI, but forcing a thing that doesn’t really do what is promised and uses a lot of energy to do it might might be something to be irritated about.
None of what is considered ‘AI’ is actually AI, it’s just a rebrand of machine learning tech that has been around for a few years now (and is genuinely useful in certain circumstances). It’s all ‘AI’, only the generative AI is worth getting mad about.
Disabled. By. Default.
Waterfox is a great alternative
I’ve been using it on my phone for a few months as a trial run before putting it on my PCs. I like it a lot so far!
I mean, there is a single button to disable all AI
Librewolf as well!
That’s all well and good that they give you the ability to turn it off. What’s not changing though is that most of their focus will be on integrating AI which most people don’t want. As a result the pace of other new features being tested/implemented will probably slow significantly.
Since “AI” doesn’t exist, anything can be “AI”.
For example, a translation program is not “AI”.
But people do want features like translation regardless of how they’re dishonestly marketed.
What’s not changing though is that most of their focus will be on integrating AI which most people don’t want.
I agree that AI chatbots are absolutely useless and have no place in a browser, but out of the three ML features in the screenshot, one is great for blind people, and another one is great for making the web more multilingual, so their usefulness is quite self-evident. Regarding ethics, at least for the last one it’s using a local model, and was trained using open-source datasets.[1]
What makes so-called “AI” bad is not the amount of users that can benefit from it, but how useful it is to the people that do use the feature, which usually means having experts tailor machine learning unto a single purpose.
I personally use the translation feature at least once a week when looking at news article that are not in English, and now I’m using a lot to translate Japanese webpages to plan a holiday there, so I’m very happy that Mozilla has invested time abd collaborated with universities to make this feature, I wish other people were less flippant about it just because it has “AI” in its name.
[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/06/training-efficient-neural-network-models-for-firefox-translations/
It seems pretty clear to me that despite the ambiguity of the term AI, people are specifically railing against LLMs, not ML. It also seems clear to me that the new Firefox direction as announced by their CEO is to incorporate more LLM specifically into the browser.
Plus, even if you can turn it off, the feature is still in the code, needing updates, etc., even if you don’t ever use it. Literal bloat.
Don’t forget adding additional surface area for security vulnerabilities. Does the off switch prevent a zero day attack via that code? Of course not.
The feature would likely need to be enabled to take advantage of such vulnerability in said feature.
At least these features won’t introduce any novel security holes! /s
HDR never, woo…
Also we have all seen this movie before. They launch with promises of having a choice to turn it on or off… until it’s no longer a choice.
When did Firefox take away a choice that was previously offered?
A lot of these are extensions that are folded into the main Firefox feature set, experimental features or not even related to the browser?
Pocket’s dead now.
Like another user said, where’s “open image in new tab”? (I notice you didn’t reply to them.)
Remember XUL extensions and real browser themes?
Remember when you didn’t need a developer account to make extensions and you could distribute them via your own website?
But of course, Firefox never takes away choices that were previously offered.
“Open image…” is still there. If you’re not seeing it anymore, it’s sites taking it away from you. (I notice you didn’t check before getting outraged.)
I did check. It’s not there.
Didn’t people generally hate pocket’s forced integration? Anyways I’ve never said that they’ve never removed features nor was disagreeing that what you said isn’t generally true. It’s just that the list posted has a lot of examples that aren’t exactly a removal of a Firefox feature which hurts the argument being made. There’s more than enough reasons as you mentions to make a case for it.
Like another user said, where’s “open image in new tab”? (I notice you didn’t reply to them.)
I don’t see where’s the relevance in pointing out that I didn’t reply to another user’s post when I’m in agreement with them.
Relax man, let’s have a civil discussion that doesn’t devolve into sarcasm.
Pocket was originally an extension before Mozilla forced integration and bloated it into something it wasn’t. The “something it wasn’t” part, Stories, is still Firefox bloatware but without the Pocket label.
The “open image in new tab” context menu option, off the top of my head, it has been 1000 small things with them, no 1 outrageous removal, but tons of them that didnt make big impacts yet still annoyed people who used them.
Edit: It was actually “View Image”, “Open Image in New Tab” was the alternative that remained. It was removed in v88
Actually now that I checked my Firefox, it’s still there? I’m on version 147.
My bad, I misremembered, it was “View Image”, “Open Image in New Tab” was what Mozilla claimed was the solution in the bug tracker. It was removed in v88
Since when is “open image” gone for you? Are you sure it’s not the site blocking you? Many do that these days, but FF still has the option. There are some addons that can circumvent sites trying to block you (part of the functionality of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search_by_image/ for instance)
I partially misremembered, it was “View Image” and I updated the above post with details.
This happened quite often for various UI settings etc. Often there were technical reasons for removing the option (e.g. rewrites where they dropped features with low usage), but it is a real thing.
You were always able to turn it off, now it’s easier.
You haven’t seen this movie before with Firefox. All the ad stuff and sponsoring integrations like Pocket were always very easy to turn off.
Are you talking about Microsoft?
To be fair, their reduced focus and the potential pace improvement through LLM assisted coding might cancel each other out. I wouldn’t be surprized if the resulting pace change is net zero or better.
That said: I like Firefox local translations, but haven’t found a use case for its other AI features yet.
the potential pace improvement through LLM assisted coding
Have we actually seen any evidence that LLM’s increase the pace of coding? Because in most of the reports I’ve seen there is no measurable difference even when users feel like they’re faster
What ive read, and what is accurate according to my experience, is that its very fast for creating smaller pieces of code, like scripts, foundations, docs etc. So with a small context, its great.
As soon as you start to ask it to add features to a larger code base, it will mess things up and add code that is not necessary, and add extra complexity. And it will now be slower to use Ai than before, because now you are spending time iterating and correcting, and you may not even get a working solution at all.
Thats my experience with Ai.
I think it does speed things up, since it can generate syntax quickly, but its not very good code and leads to a big mess. Eventually you want to rewrite from scratch yourself.
But I think it helps for sure. The alternative to find all syntax yourself and write it correctly is very time cons unik, although you also gain a much better understanding by doing that.
There are some concerns but yes, development generally accelerates: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03156
They meant with the cleaning up after it.
we present a systematic literature review of 37 peer-reviewed studies published between January 2014 and December 2024
So they AI summarized other people’s work.
Most studies are exploratory (64%) and methodologically diverse, but lack longitudinal and team-based evaluations.
And later acknowledge there are major gaps in methodology. I wouldn’t be linking to this as proof of accelerated dev imho.
What features do you still need after 22 years of development?
HDR, hardware accelerated/parallelized layout/browser engine (servo)
I mean this was announced months ago. I remember I think it was about a month ago there was articles on here talking about it and I specifically went on both blue sky and Mastodon and roasted Firefox for making this decision.
Hell year more slop
You mean like translations of text? People mad about this?
Can someone please put a responsible adult in charge of that damned organization?
So I can use AI to group my tabs but I can’t even group tabs in the first place on mobile? Epic prioritization
Nah, there is no “AI” grouping your tabs. It’s just a grift.
Pepperidge Farms remembers when Firefox had a control like that to turn JavaScript on and off. The rest of you are supposed to have forgotten. Oops.
Javascript? Y’all aren’t using text only browsers??!?! Sellouts. \s
There is still NoScript, which is arguably much better than that, since it offers more granular control
I wrote myself a little plugin for firefox.
It runs nice, and I want to install it permanently. It does something I want.
Can I? No. Why? Because Firefox… Apparently I’m not adult enough to control my own browser. WTF.
I have to either get their developer build or become a developer with an account. WTF.
So I think, I don’t want their developer build, I just want this plugin— I make a mozilla plugin developer account- because apparently that’s how I’m supposed to do it- I try to create the plugin upload —
Can I? No. Why? Because they want my phone number before I can make a plugin just for myself. WTF.
So - I ask ChatGPT if there is any work around for this, can it search, I just want to run my own plugin, I don’t want the developer build, I don’t want the developer account, I just want to run my own plugin- ChatGPT says it can’t help me because I’m not adhering to Firefox’s EULA. WTF.
So I give up on the plugin - and today, I just happen to notice Mozilla silently turned on SYNC for my web history for that fucking Mozilla plugin developer account. So I guess I’m sending them everything I ever do on the web. WTF.
I go and try to find out what information they’ve stolen from me, can I find it? No. The have some link, to another link, to another link, to another link, which eventually ends up on some page where I can ask them to pretty please send me what information they stole. Why can I not see this without writing a letter! WTF.
WTF WTF WTF. I hate Mozilla.
Please let them burn in software hell.
/rant
@blaggle42 @solrize
https://www.w3tutorials.net/blog/firefox-add-ons-how-to-install-my-own-local-add-on-extension-permanently-in-firefox/There er multiple ways but yes they don’t make it easy cause the want to make the attack vector aka ( a “friend” sent you a email with the “hottest new” firefox extension ) as small as possible.
I understand what you are saying - but - if I want to install a program on my computer - I should be allowed to do so - the same with firefox — maybe it might need me doing the equivalent of sudo, entering some password - or just clicking through, “ok, yes I know, extensions can do bad things.”, “yes I really know that I shouldn’t install an extension if I don’t know exactly what it is” 10 times, but — etc…
I just don’t buy the “attack vector” argument. There are many ways to mitigate, without removing the ability.
Anyway, in a way this was a good experience - I am going to try to ditch firefox sooner than later now.
don’t enable unsigned extensions. It’s there for good reason.
upload your addon to addons.mozilla.org. there’s an option to not publish, but only upload for signing. then you’ll get back a signed xpi you can install properly.
Doesn’t work. Try to do it without giving them a phone number or installing some other application. You can’t. Or I couldn’t.
Then, after you can’t and you think, “I’ll go to the forums, see if there is a way.” You’ll find out Mozilla has problems with sign in. I mean come on… But this is irrelevant, this whole flow is dumb. And it presumes that I shouldn’t be able to control my own browser.
We need a new firefox - just like the original firefox showed that Mozilla was bloat and dumb, we need another that shows the current is bloat and dumb.
Using dev edition is the equivalent of sudo.
Firefox can just install an extension from clicking a link, combine that with tech illiterate people just panic-clicking “ok” on every popup, that really is an attack vector.
I mean, billions of people click yes on a “hey we’re gonna take all your data and sell it to everyone, are you okay with that?” screen multiple times a day…
Again. You are saying you shouldn’t be able to install applications on your computer.
I mean, if that’s what you believe. I don’t. I think I should be able to decide what I run and where I run it.
Especially if the company thinks of itself as open source.
Meh, no script does that quite well, not?
No it doesn’t, you want to be able to turn off JS while it is running, and that is now impossible. Noscript stops it from running in the first place and that breaks too many sites.
You can do it. F12->debugger->cog->uncheck “Show paused overly”, click the pause button. Very very few sites still work well that way. It just doesn’t make sense to have this functionality in a HTML5 world.
I’ll just leave this here
It’s FireFox but
- no telemetry/spying-on-you
- no AI
- uBlock Origin enabled
In other words, it’s the open source browser Mozilla was always supposed to be.
Plus it’s typically not more than 12 hrs behind any FF release.Accept one of our free tanks ! They get 100 MPG and go 100 MPH over any terrain!
people (not calling you out specifically) keep suggesting Librewolf like it isn’t driving around a city in a tank. it gets the job done, sure, but most people will not tolerate its faults. Suggest something more in-between like Waterfox at least.
Suggesting Librewolf is like asking people to browse the web via Tor. it works, sure, but the inconvenience will make most people give up on gecko-based browsers and give into Google/chrome via Brave or the million other chrome-in-sheep’s-wool browsers.
Let’s recommend viable alternatives: https://www.waterfox.com/
Tor
No, it is very different from suggesting TBB or even just TB.
A few websites may have some rough edges. Some of that will come from uBlock Origin. Some will come from LW defaults like letterboxing/anti-fingerprinting.
And some websites will have issues with vanilla FF, because it’s not Chrome.
Yes, for some sites you may need to turn off a privacy setting. I have run across 2-3 such, usually an over-engineered Django or custom-coded WordPress site. 98%+ of the time, I don’t notice.
I’ve been using it for a while, and it feels almost indistinguishable from regular Firefox. Broken sites are not a common problem.
most people will not tolerate its faults
What faults?
Let’s pull some obvious ones from the feature list!
- Include only privacy respecting search engines like DuckDuckGo and Searx.
- Always force user interaction when deciding the download location of a file
- Disable autoplay of media.
- Disable search suggestions and ads in the urlbar.
- Disable Firefox Sync, unless explicitly enabled by the user.
For some other ones:
- Logs you out of everything every time you close the browser.
- If memory serves, it letterboxes by default. If it doesn’t, ignore this line, I haven’t used it in a while.
I’m not saying I don’t like these features. I do. I only accept login cookies from services I host myself.
Most people will see that as an extreme annoyance the first time it happens, close the browser, uninstall it, and never try another Firefox fork again.
Most people care enough about privacy to want convenient ways to increase it. Most people do not care enough about privacy to have to log into Facebook every single time they restart their browser.
All of these are disableable, very few people will even bother looking into how to disable them. They will stop using the browser.
You listed a lot of very interesting features and probably convinced me to install it and give it a try, thanks, but again, what faults?
These are faults for most people. They’re benefits to some! Myself included! I use an even more strict browser for most websites. I am not most people, neither are you. Most of the people I know, and most of the people I interact with, would uninstall that within 5 days because it’s missing features that have been standard in web browsers for at least a decade.
If these features interest you, that’s great! But you’re not the average user. Congrats tho. Librewolf may be perfect for you.
Most website-breaking features can be re-enabled in the Settings menu, in a special Librewolf section
Most people will see that as an extreme annoyance the first time it happens, close the browser, uninstall it, and never try another Firefox fork again.
I need FOSS people to understand that most people will not do that.
All of these are disableable, very few people will even bother looking into how to disable them. They will stop using the browser.
Also I did say that
What kind of inconviniences? I have experienced literally none - except you may need to enable DRM. That’s one then
DRM is one. On Windows it doesn’t auto-update by default (maybe that’s changed now?). I recall you have to whitelist some sites to work properly. It’s just not something I can set up for my parents and expect most/all websites to work without intervention.
I’d say Mullvad’s browser is more like browsing the net via TOR, but Librewolf is only about 2 steps behind it.
But yeah there are so many others that will still feel usable to someone who doesn’t think the everyone isn’t part of their threat model
more in-between like Waterfox
is that one still owned by an advertising company?
The original creator owns it again. That’s why I use it. If he sells it or whatever then I’ll switch to librewolf. I just don’t want ai bs in my browser but I am not a privacy nerd either.
They actually listened to the community, thats very nice.
No. Listening to the community would involve not polluting the browser with that shit in the first fucking place.
Translations? Tab grouping? Link previews?
These very simple features (which have nothing to do with imaginary “AI”) are probably useful to lots of people.
I think the main normie user kinda wants AI stuff? I guess most current Firefox users are some kind of nerd, but Mozilla would like to get to normie users again, which are clearly the bigger share of all users, soo…
No, they don’t. They just take whatever they get served. The only ones wanting are the ones not wanting it, the others will just use whatever they get. This move won’t get them users, if anything, they will loose and fragment their userbase even more.
Thanks for posting, but people will find something else stupid to complain about, because there is pretty obviously a storm of propaganda against Firefox, which I very much suspect is driven by interests that are against an open and free internet.
Blocking these features may calm some people, but in reality, none of these features were used for anything unless specifically used by the user. So the claim of it making Firefox slower or using more resources or being used for telemetry were all outright lies.
A sentiment is tried to be created that Firefox is just as bad as Chrome, Edge, Brave and Safari when nothing could be further from the truth. But even people who consider themselves IT savvy are falling for it. 🙁
Interestingly these attacks on Firefox coincide with Chrome getting steadily worse, forcing Googles own standards and preventing plugins that block advertising, while reducing functionality for Firefox on Google/Alphabet owned sites.
I don’t think the proliferation of bad press is anything other than a chronicle of the decline of Firefox.
I’ve been ride or die with Firefox since early, and I’ve never daily driven Chrome. But I’ve had to keep Chrome installed to look at the sites that don’t play with FF. Little by little, FF get’s worse, and most of the “worst” these days are features, not bugs. Though their are plenty of bugs. They certainly deserve praise for keeping faith with ublock. And I appreciate that they respect privacy more than Alphabet.
I want Mozilla to succeed. I just remember when Mozilla made the case with the quality of their software, rather than the quality of their ethics.
Websites not playing nice with Firefox has nothing to do with Firefox itself, and everything to do with lazy web devs only testing with chromium based browsers and maybe Safari.
Websites not playing nice with firefox is website developers fault not bothering to test. Heck, some sites even block you from using firefox even if it would work anyway (ex: some days ago i needed to use a site that said “you are using firefox, it will not work so just use chrome” when i changed my useragent to mimic a chrome browser, the site worked perfectly…that’s just dev lazyness!)
I wish more people realized that using a simple policies.json file can easily transform their Firefox to behave more like LibreWolf out of the box, meaning (as someone else mentioned earlier):
- telemetry disabled by default
- AI features disabled by default
- uBlock Origin enabled out-of-the-box
It is sad (and funny) that people are calling Mozilla and Firefox shady but then installing Firefox-based “forks” from random 3rd parties. I wonder how many people realize that “forks” like LibreWolf are not patching the spooky AI or telemetry source code out of the browser at all, they are pretty much just shipping Firefox with their opinionated custom configurations and a different branding.
How about they just… not include the LLM bullshit in the first place? Just make a browser that strictly renders text and images according to W3C standards?
The only LLM here is the chatbot which nobody is being forced to use.
The fact that it’s part of the browser at all is a problem. It shouldn’t ever be in a browser. All it should be is a tool to strictly download and render W3C compliant text and images. Everything else should be a unique program - and no, Electron is not “unique” - it’s just another copy of an awful browser.
When chrome came out, it was pretty much that. Super fast, very bare bones. But people loved it because of the speed and the simplicity.
Im curious how Orion will turn out. There is supposed to be an alpha for Linux coming out now this February.
When Chrome came out, a lot of us knew that letting DoubleClick have any control over access to the Internet was a bad idea. This is another part of that.
It was just Safari (WebKit) at that point.
Now, people will complain that pizzaz doesn"t load at all, because Chrome does a vaguely defined JS-thing in a opinionated way. And then they use something Chromium-based.
What do you mean “they actually listened to the community”? If they’d listen to the community, there’d be NO AI whatsoever.
There is literally no “AI” whatsoever. These are just basic programs.
With Firefox’s new CEO (Who is a douche canoe) I would not be at all surprised if this is the only development going in to the browser for the last two months.
